1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate to the information technology field. More specifically, such embodiments of the invention relate to computer-assisted comprehension of texts by a user of a data processing system.
2. Description of Related Art
The comprehension of texts is not always an easy task. For example, this may be particularly difficult for complex texts, especially when they relate to very specialist fields (such as technical papers). The problem is more acute when the text is written in a foreign language (which a reader of the text does not know perfectly).
In order to mitigate this problem, a number of tools are available to assist the reader in translating the text into his/her native language. For example, on-line dictionaries are commonly used to look up the words that are not known to the reader. However, the operation of retrieving the translation of each desired word from the dictionary is very time consuming. Moreover, the reader must continually interrupt the reading of the text; therefore, s/he is diverted by those repeated changes (between the text and the dictionary). This has a detrimental impact on the concentration of the reader, and then on the comprehension of the text.
Automatic translation tools are also known in the art. Those tools are based on software programs, which translate the text in a different language without any human intervention. The automatic translation tools available on the market exploit a number of different algorithms. For example, the simplest solution consists of replacing each word of the text with its translation. More sophisticated solutions perform a linguistic analysis of the text, in an attempt to decode its actual meaning; for example, this cognitive process is based on lexical, grammar or semantic rules. The above-mentioned linguistic rules may be applied according to different approaches; for example, the automatic translation tools can exploit heuristic, statistical or analogy methods.
The same techniques are also used by services that provide an instant translation of online texts. Those instant translation services have become very popular in the Internet; typical applications of the instant translation services relate to web pages, e-mail, and chats (for example, in e-commerce sites).
In any case, the result of the automatic translation tools currently available is very poor. Indeed, the meaning of any text is heavily dependent on its context. However, it is very difficult (if not impossible) to provide significant information about the context of the text to the automatic translation tools; moreover, the use of this information by the automatic translation tools is not trivial. As a result, the automatic translation tools are commonly used in specific and well-understood situations only; in any case, the obtained results always require a post-editing intervention by a human translator.
Therefore, the automatic translation tools are at best useful to provide the raw meaning of the argument of the (original) text. In any case, they are completely unable to convey the complete understanding of the text. The solution is then untenable in most practical situations (for example, when an accurate comprehension of the text is required).